The Idea of 'Demographic Destiny' Was Always Flawed | TIME
Donald Trump is back in the White House thanks in part to making large gains with Latina/o and Asian American voters in states like Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia. While the vast majority of Trump voters are still non-Latino whites, the jump in his support among Latina/os and Asian Americans has drawn significant attention and prompted hand-wringing among Democrats.
Another leg has been kicked out from under the narrative of “demographic destiny” — which posited that Democrats would thrive as the electorate got less white. The theory dates to An Emerging Democratic Majority, an influential 2002 book by political scientists John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira. It was reinforced by Barack Obama’s 2008 victory, before the Trump years made clear its flaws.
Some pundits claim that this idea has proved false because the Democrats have lurched to the left, adopting a platform that some Latina/o community leaders in particular perceive as radical and out of touch. Yet, the truth is that the demographic destiny narrative was always flawed, because it falsely assumed that disparate groups of non-white Americans had the same politics.
Non-white voters are often grouped in one of two ways. First, different racial groups — “Latinos” and “Asian Americans” — get categorized together. Then they are all thrown together along with Black Americans in one group: people of color. Yet, these labels obscure more than they clarify.
The idea of one unified group of Asian Americans dates to the late 1960s. The term was originally popularized by the radical student-led group Asian American Political Alliance (AAPA), which wanted it to signify support for “a political agenda of equality, anti-racism and anti-imperialism,” not a simple racial identity. Yet, the intent quickly got lost when in 1977, federal officials adopted “Asian or Pacific Islander” as a racial category that grouped together all Americans of Asian and Pacific Islander origins regardless of their beliefs.
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But this group was never a political monolith. The most populous Asian American groups in the 1970s were Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino Americans. Their distinct